


and echoes lost in space

by SugarFey



Series: Life Is Hard To Find Again [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Gen, Pre-Thor/Valkyrie (hinted), Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 05:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12834603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/pseuds/SugarFey
Summary: She tries to toast her sisters’ memory, but the words get stuck in her throat. Tries to imagine the Valkyrior entering the halls of Valhalla, but their faces are covered in blood. Tries to picture Sigrid, vibrant and whole, but all she can see is the horror on Sigrid’s face as she pushes Brunnhilde away from the blade that should have pierced her chest.A Valkyrie, then and now.





	and echoes lost in space

**Author's Note:**

> So I went to see Thor: Ragnarok, and like everyone, I fell head over heels in love with Valkyrie. The hints in her backstory intrigued me, so I took a stab at writing my own take.
> 
> Many thanks to Frea_O for the beta and Obishenshenobi for the feedback and discussion.

_When she was a child, she believed in glory._

Brunnhilde is but ten years old when she is chosen, plucked like a kitten from a gaggle of girls offered to the Valkyrior.

Her selection is a surprise to all but herself. After all, Brunnhilde is small, her knees and elbows skinny, and her thick, black hair is already escaping from the braids some well-meaning villager tied for her. True, her mother was a Valkyrie, but one who never rose far in the ranks, and the poor woman succumbed to battle wounds when Brunnhilde was barely five. 

“It must be out of pity,” a woman whispers to the man beside her, hugging her own jilted daughter. 

“A tribute to poor Magnhild,” the man agrees, not even bothering to lower his voice.

“Seems a cruelty. Surely the child won’t last.” 

Brunnhilde holds her head high and tries to ignore the burning blush in her cheeks. She is destined for the Valkyrior; her birth demands it. Her mother, as far as she can remember, was tall, so it stands to reason that in time, Brunnhilde will be also. Skinny she may be, but Brunnhilde has spent days upon days practicing swordcraft with sticks in the fields, jumping through the trees, challenging the local children to scraps.

The Valkyrie representative barks out instructions and Brunnhilde falls in line, never turning to look back.

The first day at the training centre is a bit of a shock. While Brunnhilde’s parentage makes her an oddity in her village, here several of her training mates are Valkyrie daughters. Some even have mothers still living.

Drills and sparring are a far cry from short scraps in the streets. When they are finally dismissed for bed, Brunnhilde drags herself to her bunk, bruises blooming on her skin.

Her bunkmate is tall and two years older, with long hair the colour of corn silk and skin like milk. On the third day, when Brunnhilde is hunched on the bed with a black eye and bleeding lip, she hands Brunnhilde a warm, wet cloth and says her name is Sigrid.

 

* * *

 

Sigrid has no Valkyrie heritage in her family. Her parents are wealthy merchants in Asgard and they had expected her to marry well and carry on their trade, but selection for the Valkyrior is an honour to which they are not immune. Every week Sigrid receives packages of fruit and sweets, and though she offers to share with all her training mates (Valkyries do not value individual possessions, as they are constantly reminded), Brunnhilde cannot help wondering if Sigrid notices that she herself has not received a single correspondence from home. Her mother had left her in the care of her brother, and while he and his family were kind to her as a child, they made no secret of how relieved they were to have one less mouth to feed once Brunnhilde was recruited. She refuses to let their silence bother her, but the contrast with Sigrid, who is so clearly _wanted_ , is sharp.

Though Sigrid is two years ahead in her training, soon she and Brunnhilde are inseparable. Brunnhilde feels the heat of jealousy from the other girls when she saunters past them to sit with Sigrid and the older girls at mealtimes. Watching Sigrid helps Brunnhilde with the form and skill she lacked, and it does not take long before Brunnhilde stops being beaten to a pulp in sparring practice and starts winning.

She wins a lot.

Brunnhilde crawls into Sigrid’s upper bunk at night, and they lie awake whispering of themselves as future legends.

_“You will lead the Valkyrior into battle, and your horse will be white as bone.”_

_“You will fight queens.”_

The years wind by and the young recruits see one Valkyrior war party after another returning on their winged horses, bloody and triumphant. The girls hover around the edges of the victory feasts, breathing the scent of roaring bonfires and sweet, roasting meat. The Valkyries drink, shout and throw their arms around each other. Brunnhilde watches as the two Valkyries nearest to her sway in the firelight, entwined in each other, as though no other person existed but them.

Sometimes, but not often, they return almost silently, carrying stretchers of wounded and dying on their shoulders. The dead are left on the battlefield. A Valkyrie has no grave. 

Brunnhilde is fifteen when the bonfires and the feasts become less frequent and the wounded seem to fill the infirmary to bursting. A few are gone overnight, sent away to die with their families, as her mother had been all those years ago.

The rumours fly fast among the girls. Odin is leading the armies farther into the realms, his daughter by his side. Many of the realms are savage, unable to understand the benevolence of Asgard. Some recruits whisper that the Valkyrior need to replenish their ranks, that a few of the older girls may be called for the final tests before they are of age. 

In the morning, Sigrid is gone.

 

* * *

 

Odin’s campaigns have reached a lull by the time Brunnhilde is of age, so she takes the final physical ability tests in the royal great hall, as is traditional.

Her hands tremble slightly when she reaches for the throwing daggers for the first test: Accuracy. Eight years of training have led to this. Eight years of drills and manoeuvres, eight years of repeating the same moves over and over until they become part of her muscle memory, eight years of watching the Valkyrior return and picturing herself among their ranks.

Her name is called and she tries to take a slow, deep breath to calm her nerves as she steps up to the line drawn on the marble floor. Far across the hall, King Odin sits on his throne, his wife standing on one side, his daughter Hela on the other. Brunnhilde glances up at the royal family as she takes aim, and catches Hela sneering. The shock sends an unwelcome chill through her body and Brunnhilde’s first throw misses the bull’s eye by over an inch. Gritting her teeth, she decides not to look towards the throne anymore.

The next three daggers hit their targets, and Brunnhilde’s hands are shaking less by the time she passes the daggers back to the supervising instructor. With the first test out of the way, Brunnhilde starts to feel more relaxed, and by the time she stands ready for her first sparring round, she has found a strange sense of calm.

The girl facing her, Gudrun, is nearly as good a fighter as she is and a great deal stronger, but Brunnhilde has agility on her side. The three bouts seem to take an age, and Brunnhilde’s lungs are screaming by the time she manages to knock Gudrun off balance and point her sword at her throat. 

“I yield,” Gudrun spits, frustration written across her face. With her sweaty skin gleaming brightly and her red hair plastered to her forehead, she looks at least as exhausted as Brunnhilde feels. 

Lips bleeding and her mind buzzing with adrenaline, Brunnhilde offers Gudrun her hand when the sound of loud, decisive clapping splits the air.

Odin has risen from his throne, his hands raised in acknowledgement. “Well fought, Valkyrie,” he announces, his voice booming across the hall. “I see there is potential in our ranks.” 

Pride glows in Brunnhilde’s chest and she cannot help shrugging happily, even as Hela’s derisive glare sharpens.

She ranks first in all of her tests with the exception of Accuracy, which irritates her more than she cares to admit. But a Valkyrie she now is, and Brunnhilde takes her turn kneeling before Odin to swear her oaths of loyalty and service to the throne. Odin claps his hand on her shoulder and bids her to rise, and the heady combination of music and light bouncing off the golden walls give the scene the unreality of a long-held dream. 

As an acknowledgement of her abilities, Brunnhilde is given the honour of being the first to receive the tattoo on her arm that officially marks her as one of the Valkyrior. She is also the first to receive her own slivery-green Dragonfang blade, the kind that is unique to the Valkyrior armoury. Light in weight but practically indestructible, slim and razor sharp. 

Brunnhilde maintains the necessary dignity while she stands in the presence of Odin and the Valkyrior squadrons, now her sisters. As soon as she is able to leave the royal halls, however, she unsheathes her new sword and swings it experimentally in the sunlight. The Dragonfang glitters in arcs of green sparks, and the blade seems to sing in her hands.

“Well, well,” a low voice says behind her, interrupting her swordplay. “Look who finally showed up.”

She spins around, a grin already spreading across her face. “Sigrid!”

Brunnhilde grabs her old friend in a joyous hug, laughing as Sigrid’s hair tickles her face. She smells of new leather and fresh linen, with a hint of cinnamon for spice. 

Sigrid pulls back, holding Brunnhilde’s shoulders away from her and giving her an appraising look. Brunnhilde’s stomach jolts. 

“You look good,” Sigrid concludes, softly.

Normally, Brunnhilde is not self-conscious about her looks. She hasn’t inherited her mother’s height after all, but her body is muscular and lithe from eight years of training, and the soft grey Valkyrie garb compliments her dark skin and black hair. She’s become accustomed to admiring glances being thrown her way, and at eighteen she has already had her share of lovers, though the number is fewer than she claims. But the remark from Sigrid makes her cheeks flush warm and her throat suddenly go dry, and she drops her eyes, embarrassed.

She swallows and tries to recover quickly. “You’re not entirely hideous yourself.” 

Sigrid raises an eyebrow and Brunnhilde mentally kicks herself. _All right, not a great recovery._

She stands around awkwardly until Sigrid takes her hand, gently, like a promise. “Come have a drink with me. We have much to share.”

* * *

 

“You have got to be joking.” 

Odin’s daughter raises her head imperiously. “You have something to say, Captain?”

Brunnhilde places her hands on her hips, refusing to drop her gaze. “Attacking from that angle would kill half my squad in minutes. We should attack from the rear. Then we have the element of surprise, and fewer losses on our side.”

“You mean fight like cowards?” Hela returns to examining the plans in front of her. “And here I thought the Valkyrior were famed for their bravery.”

“This isn’t bravery, this is stupidity!”

Brunnhilde knows she has gone too far the moment the words leave her lips. With lupine grace, Hela rises from her chair, striding forward as green fire flashes in her eyes.

“The Valkyrior are sworn to defend the throne and obey the orders of the king. Would you betray your oath, Valkyrie? Do the lives of your sisters mean more to you than the survival of Asgard?” She stops right in front of Brunnhilde, sneering that horrible smile of hers. “How pathetic.”

Hela towers over Brunnhilde, and Brunnhilde has to crane her neck to meet the woman’s eye. Daughter of a king Hela may be, but Brunnhilde has seen her annihilate entire villages with her hammer. Yet for the first time, Brunnhilde notices a faint odour that seems to radiate from the woman, something Brunnhilde has only ever associated with the battlefield. The stench of metal, rotting blood and death.

Suddenly, Brunnhilde is afraid. 

“Does this order come from the king?” she manages.

Hela’s smile shifts into one dripping with condescension. “I am Odin’s firstborn. I speak for him.”

Without waiting for an answer, Hela returns to the large desk where the strategies for the current campaign lie stacked in neat scrolls. She unfolds one and appears to read. “Dismissed.”

Swallowing down the bile in her throat, Brunnhilde turns to leave Odin’s war room and tries to ignore her weakened legs and damp palms. She stops by the mess on the way to the barracks and buys the biggest flask of mead she can find. 

“Who does Hela think she is, telling me how to command my own squad?” Brunnhilde grumbles when she bursts into her quarters, flopping onto the bed. She takes another long swig of mead, the alcohol slowly replacing her fear with anger. It’s the good stuff, smooth and sweet. Being an officer of the Valkyrior has its perks, notably the pay and the privacy. 

“Brunn…” Sigrid says warningly from across the room. Her hair is unbound as she combs it by the fire, and the light gives her hair a becoming copper glow. 

“What? It’s not like she can hear me.” Brunnhilde tries to stand and finds her head reeling. Maybe this is enough mead for one night.

She considers telling Sigrid about Hela’s orders, but then thinks better of it. Instead she slides her arms around Sigrid’s waist and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Are you worrying again, my duck?”

Sigrid snorts and shoves Brunnhilde in the ribs. “You’re lucky you’re good in bed, because your endearments are terrible.” 

“Shut up,” Brunnhilde says, matter-of-factly. “I’m not just good in bed. I’m _phenomenal_.” 

Sigrid’s smile is a little too indulgent for Brunnhilde’s liking. “Of course you are.” 

Swiftly, Brunnhilde pulls Sigrid down onto the furs strewn across the floor. “You’re going to make me prove it, aren’t you?” 

Sigrid’s expression turns from indulgent to feral. “Naturally.”

“Challenge accepted,” Brunnhilde murmurs, kissing her way down Sigrid’s throat.

The next long moments are lost in a haze of sighs and skin and sweat. Afterwards Brunnhilde rests her head on Sigrid’s chest, absently stroking the curve of Sigrid’s breast as their naked bodies cool.

Sigrid combs her fingers through Brunnhilde’s hair and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Be careful, Brunn. Hela does not forgive slights easily.”

“I haven’t slighted her. I simply refuse to smile and praise her as though she knows my job better than I do.”

Sigrid rolls her eyes as she sits up, ignoring Brunnhilde’s groan of protest. “You know that to a royal, that is the same as a slight.”

Brunnhilde slides her arms around Sigrid quickly from behind, urging her back down. Sigrid is fearless in battle but often cautious in private. Brunnhilde kisses the bare shoulder in front of her, hoping to soothe. “I’ll watch my words, if it will make you worry less.”

She does not mention her own fears.

 

* * *

 

 Time slows to a crawl. Sigrid. Shock and pain twisting her face. A blade, dripping and ugly, cutting through her chest. Corn-silk hair fluttering like a flag as she falls.

_No. Not her. Please._

Brunnhilde’s shoulders slam into the rocky ground, the air ripped from her lungs. Above her the steel-grey sky is a confused cacophony of battle cries, agonised screams and the terrified whinnies of horses. In the centre of the madness Odin’s daughter stands tall, the blades flying from her outstretched arms.

Sigrid lies crumpled across the jagged rocks. Her cloak is tangled in the blade jutting from her back, obscuring the gaping wound. Her face is half buried in dirt, mouth still open in an unsaid warning.

That blade was meant for Brunnhilde, so shouldn’t Brunnhilde be dead right now? Shouldn’t she be staring unseeing at the swirling clouds, while Sigrid lives?

The absurd _wrongness_ of it all, that the Valkyrior be sent to control a wayward royal, that they fall out of the sky as easily as moths with torn-off wings, that _Sigrid is dead_ , is too much to comprehend.

Gasping, Brunnhilde crawls across to where her Dragonfang lies in the dirt. The familiar grip of the hilt allows her some grounding in reality. Vengeance. That she can understand. 

When she pulls herself up to standing, it is by will more than strength. Hela stands in a whirlwind of blades and corpses. Dead horses and Valkyries lie so deep their sisters trip over their scattered limbs. Brunnhilde launches her body forward, Dragonfang held to strike.

Hela looks up, distracted from tearing another Valkyrie’s throat. Brunnhilde’s Dragonfang is thrown back by the clash of Hela’s blade, and she is only able to duck as the flat of the heavy iron strikes her across the head, knocking everything to black.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up to a massacre.

Her leg lies trapped under the body of one of her comrades. She pulls it free automatically, barely registering the pain, unable to speak, unable to do anything but stare at the broken corpses around her.

Gudrun. Eydis. Helka. _Sigrid._

Valkyrie. 

Valkyrie.

Valkyrie.

Where once the air rang with noise, now an incredible stillness reigns. The only sounds she hears are her own ragged breaths.

Because she is the only Valkyrie left breathing, she realises, and the shock tears a scream from her throat. The end of a battle, even a loss, should be filled with the cries of the wounded and the soft assurances from recovery teams who come to take them to safety.

But no grey-clad figures break through the mist; no winged horses appear on the horizon, flying Asgardian colours. The gathering light only reveals more dead, pile after pile of them; scattered on the rocks like abandoned trash.

No one is coming, because there is no one left.

She should look for Sigrid’s body. She should search for any Valkyrie who may be still living but too injured to cry out for help. She should move, do something, anything.

Instead, she kneels among the dead, the wind whipping at her hair.

It might have been a minute, it might have been a day, but suddenly, Brunnhilde hears crunching footsteps halting behind her back. She looks up, ridiculous hope in her heart, and the shadow of spikes fall on her face.

“Well,” Hela drawls triumphantly. “It looks like one of you little brats isn’t quite dead.”

Brunnhilde’s instincts kick in quickly enough to grip her Dragonfang, but in a flash Hela’s fingers grab her throat, lifting her high off the ground and into the air.

Hela pulls Brunnhilde in close, until their faces almost touch and Brunnhilde can hear her whisper.

_“Pathetic.”_

She flings Brunnhilde back into the air, higher and further than should ever be possible, and Brunnhilde _falls._

 

* * *

      

As far as shithole-planets-to-lose-yourself-in go, Sakaar is as good as any. At least, that’s what she tells herself after she recovers enough from the crash and the wounds from fighting off the junkyard scavengers who saw her as a prize.

She’s almost unaware of how she manages to find her way from the junkyard into the streets of the Sakaarian city. Mercifully, Sakaar is filled with those not wanting to be found and she gets little attention as she blindly shoves her way past people, still numb with shock and pain. She stumbles over the threshold of the first bar she comes across and somehow makes herself understood well enough to trade some universal credits for the cheapest bottle of hooch available.

She tries to toast her sisters’ memory, but the words get stuck in her throat. Tries to imagine the Valkyrior entering the halls of Valhalla, but their faces are covered in blood. Tries to picture Sigrid, vibrant and whole, but all she can see is the horror on Sigrid’s face as she pushes Brunnhilde away from the blade that should have pierced her chest.

_Oh, Sigrid, why..._

Brunnhilde clenches her fists until her nails cut into her skin, and raises the bottle to her lips.

Whether she spent days slumped on the streets of Sakaar or weeks, Brunnhilde can never be sure. The hours blur into an alcohol-fuelled daze, dragging her barely healing body from one filthy dive bar to another, barely aware of what the bartender puts in front of her, even less aware of the units she owes. She stays at the bar until the security goons throw her out, and sometimes she hits back and gets a rain of blows for her trouble.

One night —or was it morning? It was difficult to tell— a Sakaarian bounty hunter slides up beside her at the bar and offers to buy her another drink. He’s broad-shouldered, balding and his breath smells as bad as hers probably does, but he holds out a not-inexpensive cocktail and the temptation to lose herself is too great.

They go to his ship and the sex is short, brutal and messy. She crouches on all fours afterwards, vomiting her self-loathing onto the grated floors, and when the man tries to say something she throws him bodily out the entrance before the tears take her. 

She downs a bottle of Sakaarian beer to wash the taste of him out of her mouth and drinks another bottle as a punishment. Then she takes his ship. It seems a waste not to.

Eventually, of course, she runs out of units, and running out of units means being unable to buy booze, and that means having to think for more than two minutes, and Brunnhilde refuses to entertain that option.

First, she sells her armour. It gets her a decent price but the units are still gone too quickly. Then, she tries to sell her daggers. The scrapper bargains a price, but his gaze lingers on the Dragonfang hilt gleaming at her side. 

The thought is tempting, and that alone is enough to startle her into walking away.

It doesn’t take long before she offers her services to the Grandmaster. All or nothing.

 

* * *

 

In Sakaar no one asks for her name, and she never offers it. Instead, she has a number and a job description, courtesy of the Grandmaster. Scrapper 142. She comes to like the anonymity of it. She comes to like many things.

In the quiet moments, shame sometimes bubbles under her skin, causing her head to hurt and cheeks to burn. It takes less alcohol than it should to drown the feeling. The dreams take a little more convincing.

_“I died for you, Brunn. The blade was meant for you. It should have been you. It should be you. Why do you still live?”  
_

_“You call this living? I never asked you to die for me. You don’t know shit.”_

Most days she wakes up alone, sometimes she wakes up with other people. Sometimes she knows their names, most of the time she doesn’t. Sometimes she even enjoys it, and on those nights the dreams plague her less.

One such morning, Brunnhilde starts awake, her head pounding as she gasps for air. Sweat soaks her naked skin, and hastily she fishes on the floor for her abandoned cloak. Her hand lights on a heavy bottle instead, which on closer inspection still has a few dregs. She tips the bottle to her lips and rests her elbows on her knees, trying to clear her aching head.

It was her mother who had haunted her sleep this time. Stretched out on her uncle’s bed, her hair pasted to her forehead as she shook with fever from the poisoned cut in her side. 

Brunnhilde had thought her mother’s death a noble one, then. A warrior’s death. A warrior’s death for a king who never even knew her name, who did not honour her because her body did not lie on a battlefield of his own creation.

“Fuck Odin,” Brunnhilde forces out into the empty room. 

“You tell ’em, sweetheart,” the woman lying next to her murmurs, not bothering to raise her head.

She overhears snatches of Asgard gossip occasionally from the passers-through. Odin had another son. A war with the Frost Giants. Elves. At first a few people start when they spot the tattoo on her wrist, then eventually, no one seems to notice it at all.

The inheritance of a remnant: Irrelevancy.

 

* * *

 

After a wasted century or two, Odin’s sons fall through gateways and stir up everything she tried to forget.

She’s pleasantly surprised to find her muscle memory hasn’t completely deteriorated, and when she takes up arms alongside a new king, she wonders, for the flicker of a moment, if this is what redemption could taste like.

It takes a while before the confused hell on board the Sakaarian ship settles into a deathly quiet mourning. 

She keeps herself apart from the Asgardian refugees, feeling at once unable and unworthy to participate in the remembrance ceremonies for people she had abandoned. No one urges her to join in either, so they must agree that she is no longer truly one of them, or they do not expect her to care. She stays in her assigned quarters and tries not to let the exile sting.

She has barely seen glimpses of Thor for days, and it’s a surprise when he falls in step beside her in the hallway.

“I didn’t have a chance to ask you your name,” he says, his voice low. “It was rude of me.”

“There wasn’t any need for you to ask.” _No one else did,_ she adds silently.

“Even so, I would like to know what I should call you. ‘Scrapper 142’ doesn’t seem right.”

The way he holds himself is different to how he was when she first saw him in the Sakaar junkyard. The swagger and bravado are gone, replaced by a calm, quiet confidence, as though he has aged a thousand years in a single day. The prince in the arena was a boy still. The king has become a man.

“Please,” he urges. When he turns to face her, the patch over his eye failing to disguise the wound marring his face, the grief and loss lie bare between them, and perhaps, he can understand.

She considers, and the name slips over her like well-worn armour, rusty with age. It seems fitting, since _us_ and _we_ became _me_ and _I,_ that _a_ would become _the._ But the title also belongs to Sigrid, to her mother, to her sisters, and as long as she lives, they will have someone to honour them.

“Call me Valkyrie.”

 


End file.
